Story Sent in by Jordana:
My first date with Steve would have been pretty great if not for his shenanigans during the last one percent of the evening. He took me out to a nice meal, we sat in my car and talked for a while, went out for ice cream, sat in my car and talked a bit longer, and then, as it was late, I let him know that I was going to head home.
"I'd like to give you a hug," he said, "But outside of the car. It's awkward to try it in here."
Right he was, and so we stepped out of my car and he jogged around to my side to give me a hug. He then drew away and said, "I put a bomb in your house. It'll go off unless you kiss me right now."
I knew he was joking, of course, but his tone of voice, the fact that he didn't smile, and his close proximity to my face made me think that he meant it more as a threat than as a joke.
I laughed awkwardly and pulled away from him. "You can go ahead and blow it up," I said, "That's not really the most romantic way to charm a kiss out of me."
"I'm serious," he persisted, "There's a bomb in your house. I put it there before we met up tonight. If you don't kiss me then I'm going to set it off. I promise you."
"Okay. Goodnight, Steve."
I opened my car door and as I stepped inside, he said, "I'm serious. Everything and everyone you care about. Blown sky high."
I closed my car door and turned the car on. Through the window, I heard him continue, "You obviously don't really care about anyone other than yourself. They're all going to be blown up! How can you be so selfish?"
I lurched the car forward. He backed away immediately and watched me go. I made it home to my very likely bomb-free house and readied for bed.
In the morning, I had a voicemail. It had been left at a little after four in the morning. It was Steve, and he said, "Hey Jordana, I'm sorry about the bomb threat. Turns out I forgot to leave it in your house. It's been in my trunk the whole time. I'm just trying to disarm it now and–oh my God! Ka-boom!" and that was it.
I hope that his remains were successfully recovered and treated with the dignity that they deserved.
So the guy thought that somehow he would communicate to the bomb whether he was kissed or not so that it would explode.
ReplyDeleteWhat worries me is not that people actually use those kinds of excuses. Its the fact that many women fall for it...
Hooray for using terroristic threats to secure sexual favors!
ReplyDeleteI think at some point during the date, he lost respect/interest in you for anything other than a hookup/makeout sesh. So he must have figured he had nothing to lose by acting that way. Either he gets what he wants, or never sees you again. Win/win, in his mind.
Orrrrrrrrrrrr - and I'm going out on a limb here, because SO MANY of the dates on this site are OVERFLOWING with sanity - he was incredibly socially awkward and insane.
DeleteThank you for not using the title "He's Da Bomb".
ReplyDeleteIf she had kissed him, his next foray into the beautiful realm that is romance would have been "I've got snipers across the street from the pet store. If you don't sleep with me, the kittens get it. I'm serious! If we don't have sex, I'll be killing kittens ALL NIGHT!"
I'm so glad I'm alone in the office right now, otherwise...Kaboom! Too much laughter.
Delete^Hahahaha.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're welcome. I like to keep my cultural references just the right mix of witty and obscure.
So overall, would it be fair to say that your date bombed?
ReplyDeleteAwesome title reference. Took me a minute to figure out where I'd heard it before, and then WHAM! POW!, it came to me.
ReplyDeleteWas this a blind date? Did someone set her up the bomb?
ReplyDeleteOP seems like an amazingly dry and tepid person. He dodged a nice bullet there.
ReplyDelete^So you agree with the bomb threat?
ReplyDeleteToledo, if by "dry and tepid" you mean "not going for the infantile and marginally funny so-called 'joke'", I totally agree.
ReplyDeleteIt was his way with dealing with an anxious feeling of asking for a kiss. Odd, but good hearted. Playfulness that doesn't need to be taken into in such an abrasive way.
DeleteMaking threats of blowing up your house is your definition of good hearted and playful? Wow.
DeleteYou must have really believed that your parents would "steal" your nose when you were 5 as well.
DeleteWhen my parents said, "GOTCHER NOSE!" they did it with a smile on their face that let me know that they were joking. OP wrote that he looked deadly serious. Had he shown ANY of the typical signs that he was joking - smiling, laughing, winking, or even making the "bomb threat" in an overly sarcastic voice - then I'm sure she at least would have been less creeped out. I thought she reacted to it rather well, considering the type of over-the-top hysteria many of our OPs experience when put in similar situations. She called him on his awkward, inappropriate behavior, which I thought gave him a nice "out" for apologizing and explaining that he was just nervous. Instead, he doubled-down, and she did the right thing by leaving.
DeleteIt's so easy to sit and judge people on the internet (she said, fully aware of her own delicious hypocrisy) for reacting in what we feel is an "incorrect" way. I wonder just how you would react were you to find yourself in a similar situation?
Toledo, I would have been on your side had he not "doubled down" after OP gave him the chance to back down and apologize. Different people have different senses of humor: when he saw that his joke was not finding a receptive audience he should have moved on to something genuinely funny. By continuing to flog a dead joke, Steve made himself tedious.
DeleteWTF? He really had a bomb???
ReplyDeleteMeh. Steve probably has a "short fuse".
ReplyDeleteI'm only responding because "close proximity" is a redundancy that is currently plaguing the world...that phrase means "close closeness" which is absolutely absurd!! "Proximity" will suffice, take care to speak properly in the future!
ReplyDeleteShe should've punched him for trying to threaten her into a kiss.
ReplyDelete